1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to circuits that activate marine obstruction lights and more specifically to the interconnection of several control circuits for operating the marine obstruction lights.
2. Description of the Related Art
Marine obstruction lights or navigation lights are common on obstructions within navigatable waters. Examples of such structures having navigation lights include marker bouys and channel boundaries. Traditionally, an obstruction that includes several navigation lights includes a synchronous mechanism to flash the lights at the same time. An example of such a mechanism is a master/slave system wherein the master circuit contains a timer, an automatic sun switch, and a power switch that turns the master light on and all the slave lights on. In the event that the total current required by the slave lights is greater than the capacity of the power switch of the master light, a third type of light, the slave repeater is often required. The slave and slave repeater lights have no automatic sun switch or timers and only the repeater has a power switch. Failure of the master light means failure of all the lights of the navigation system.
Another example of a navigation light system includes lights with individual timers and a synchronizing signal source. In this system, the synchronizing source signal starts each of the timers which each provide the signal to activate their respective navigation lights. If an individual timer fails, the respective light will fail. Also, if the synchronization source fails, the individual timers would either fail or continue to function resulting in nonsynchronous operation because of the different individual operating characteristics of the timers.
Furthermore, in the past timers were designed to flash complex codes such as a Morse code letter. An example of such an apparatus is contained in U.S. Pat. No. 3,027,491. In this implementation each different light includes a means to independently generate dots and/or dashes of Morse code. The independent operations result in not only nonuniformity of the dots and dashes defining the code letter but also result in nonsynchronism between lights.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a network of control circuits for controlling navigation lights where each control circuit is capable of operating as a master controller in relation to all other circuits in the system.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a network of timer circuits for controlling navigation lights wherein each timer circuit acting as a slave circuit is capable of detecting a failure of the master and of becoming the master itself.